South African Microsoft SAP Competence Centre - Africa's first contributing to enterprise customer business goals

Microsoft South Africa has opened a Competence Centre at the SAP Southern Africa premises in Johannesburg. The centre will be manned by Microsoft SAP Basis certified consultants. The Competence Centre has been opened as a direct result of the success of the two existing centres in Redmond (US) and Walldorf (Germany), said Mark Hill, MD of Microsoft South Africa. Hill said the facility is set up to test new product releases, allow for stronger involvement with hardware partners and encourage greater integration and development work.

New digital voice recorder enhances Crisis Centre management and training

Unisys SA has made available locally Eyretel`s MediaStore, a digital recording system for storing, capturing and retrieval of voice information. The product is installed in the Sandton Crisis Centre, and provides a crucial link in aligning the centre with the soon to be integrated nation-wide 107 emergency number, Unisys said.

Dell enters enterprise storage market with new PowerVault brand

Dell Computer has made its first foray into the high-end storage market with a new brand called PowerVault. Within the PowerVault family, Dell will offer a range of enterprise products, including SCSI-based storage subsystems, tape backup systems, storage management software and Fibre Channel-based enterprise-level scalable disk subsystems. "Dell is launching the PowerVault line with the same intensity and customer-focus we gave our server business when we entered market 20 months ago," says Glenn Jones, marketing manager for Dell Computer in South Africa.

Software AG in Darmstadt, Germany is again awarded ISO 9002 certification for technical customer service

Key strategic relationships and growth to 7,500 developers propel 3Com Palm Computing success

3Com said a record number of 7,500 developers are now creating enterprise solutions for the Palm Computing platform. The solutions aim to enable mobile employees to access enterprise-based information on the move. This news follows a series of announcements of strategic relationships with leading enterprise solutions vendors, including Oracle, Symbol Technologies, Abaco, Remedy, Computer Associates, Netscape and Sybase. In two related news announcements, 3Com and Oracle have announced a strategic alliance to bring enterprise data access solutions to the Palm Computing platform; and 3Com, Symbol and Abaco unveiled plans to deliver Palm Computing platform connectivity to SAP`s R/3.

Unisys introduces the Aquanta QS/2, its first four-way NT server based on Intel`s new Pentium II Xeon Processor

Unisys Corporation has introduced the Aquanta QS/2, the company`s first four-way server based on Intel`s new Pentium II Xeon Processor. Unisys said the Aquanta QS/2 has posted record breaking benchmarks of 17,700.43 tpm-C. This is an increase of more than 46% over the previous highest ranking TPC-C results of 12,105 tpm-C for a four-way system from NEC. The Aquanta QS/2 was running Microsoft`s Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition 4.0 and SQL Server Enterprise Edition 7.0. Available immediately, the Aquanta QS/2 enterprise server is priced starting at $11,478.

Unisys Aquanta QS/2 sets new industry TPC-C, TPC-D and SPECweb benchmarking standards

Tandberg Data to offer 3 year warranties

Tandberg Data ASA announced recently an improved worldwide warranty policy on their flagship tape drive Linear Recording Products. [Local rep: Maxtec Peripherals]

Saambou, SPL make outsourcing partners

Saambou bank has concluded an outsourcing partnership agreement with SPL in order to enhance productivity and cut costs through strategic technological planning and development.

SELECT Software Tools, Unisys SA strenghten ties

Unisys SA and SELECT Software Tools, a maker of component-based modeling and management tools, said SELECT would become a primary distribution channel for the Unisys Universal Repository (UREP).

Back up open files with St Bernard

St Bernard Software has announced an advance in open file management technology, releasing Open File Manager Version 5.1 for Windows NT servers and Windows NT workstations. Support for NetWare is planned. [Local rep: Server Tools]

NDS to offer proof of deposit solution

National Data Systems (NDS) has announced new release of NCR`s ImageMark Proof Of Deposit (POD) solution, designed to bring greater efficiency to banks` cheque-processing departments.

Forbes names Brio one to watch for 2000

In its "200 Best Small Companies in America, 1997" survey Forbes Magazine has named Brio Technology as "one to watch for the Year 2000". [Local representative: Abraxas Technologies]